Becky's Beginner Bar Soap Recipe: 3 Simple Ingredients Lye, Lard, & Water

today we're making bar so we need bar soap around the house everybody uses it I'm sure and this is a pure inexpensive soap for your family let's go I'm Becky I used to live in the consumer rant race just like you but one day I had enough so I sold it all move to the country and built my own log cabin with my own two hands now I spend my time discovering new ways to live a simple healthy lifestyle with more free time and way less stress then sharing what I've learned with you welcome to Becky's homestead okay this is really simple pure soap there's only three ingredients so it's really easy all this equipment is what we'll need but it's all stuff that you can pretty much just gather up from around the house you don't really have to buy anything I'll tell you a couple things I did buy just because it's going to make it a little nicer so if you want to upgrade just a bit you can purchase these two things the first is going to be this little electric mixer twelve dollars on Amazon so it's not that pricey and it will improve your improve your quality of soap that you make you could also use this little stirrer in the homemade laundry soap that I have a video on how to make so it's really handy and you can use it a lot the second thing that was very inexpensive and will make a difference as well is a little mold this is a silicon bread mold but it can also be a silicone soap mold as you can see it's just Nero not too deep and it'll make really nice soap for you so those are two things and this again was about I don't know ten or twelve dollars on Amazon another pretty cheap item I have made the soap using a cardboard box with you line that with plastic you can use that if you don't have the mold and the soap will come out just as good but the bars will just be a little more crude so you know if you don't mind which in the beginning I didn't mind all right so let me explain what we you need three ingredients we're going to need lye which we ordered this online this is food grade lye so you need a container of lye distilled water which that's really simple and lard or some kind of oil now you can buy the lard at your local grocery store and use that Lord or this lard is from my hogs that I raised so we're going to use the Lord that we have which hopefully we're hoping is more pure because we set them all good food you're gonna need a little scale because you do have to weigh your ingredients precisely to make a really good bar so so this is actually three things that you might need to purchase you know to make good soap with and then we have a foal because this is the bowl we're going to mix everything in with this mixture at the end if you don't have this little mixer what you need is a stainless steel spoon or a rubber spatula because you do have to stir quite a bit in the end of the process and like I said the mold and then you do need a lid for the mold which can be very simple I just use I'm going to use cardboard and then these towels are kind of at the wrong end of the table because what you're going to do after you pour the soap in the mold is you wrap it in blankets to keep it very warm and hot for 24 hours so it can process and we're going to show you all this as we go along but this is just so you can get your stuff together beforehand after the 24 hours when we get the soap out of the mold you need a cutter also this is needlepoint plastic that you can just get at Walmart or wherever it's pretty cheap but what we do is when the soap cures because the soap has to cure for like three weeks it needs to kind of get air underneath it so we set it on this over I do then this is everything you need so now we're gonna get started I'm gonna show you step-by-step how to actually make a great simple bar soap for the home before we get started I'm gonna cover the safety gear you should probably wear because you know we are gonna be dealing with this lie and lie is dangerous like it's acid it burns you so I wear gloves and I have these goggles right here whoops that are coming on and off my head just so I don't want to splash anything in my eye so obviously you need eye protection and then the gloves so and I wear long sleeves when I'm doing it too and we have the vinegar on the side because vinegar will neutralize it if you do splash it somewhere on you and it's burning you have to rinse it off with vinegar which will neutralize it I'm going to read off the recipe for you so you can write this down to have at home it's three simple ingredients 40 ounces of lard which you can buy at the supermarket five point four ounces of Y which we ordered this on Amazon you can do the same 13.5 ounces of water now if you write this down and follow this recipe exactly you will end up with beautiful bar soap we've done all the figuring for you you don't have to do any mathematics just follow this recipe exactly and you will end up with your nice bar soap so we made it easy for you okay so we're going to get started now this the first thing we're going to measure out is the water we're going to start with our 13.5 ounces of distilled water like I said before we've done all the mathematics for you so your measurements have to be very precise and right here is an area where you can mess up the whole recipe if you don't do what I'm telling you you put the container on the scale and if you can see the numbers it says zero if you put the little container on there it weighs 1.5 ounces that would mess up the whole recipe so you have to tear the scale which means I'm going to push this button and it brings it back to zero so it does not take this container into account now I can measure out exactly 13.5 ounces of water so that's what I'm going to do now I'm going to pour the water into the container exactly thirteen point five so you have to kind of go slow and give the scale a chance okay so I have to get it up a little bit more so let me go slow huh okay do you see how that's a little too much I'm going to take my turkey baster over here I'm going to suck a little bit of this water out until it's exactly thirteen point five exactly thirteen point five ounces of distilled water so we're gonna set this aside the next thing we're going to do is the lie okay so we put the scale back to zero oh we're going to put this plastic container on here make sure it's plastic and these little you know disposable plastic containers work perfect now I'm gonna put my goggles down because I'm gonna be opening up the lye so I'm gonna very carefully dump the lion here go slow I'm going slow cuz I don't want to have to put some back this was bouncing around for a second let's see it says five point four okay so this is where you know you need your rubber gloves you need your safety goggles this is the part you have to be extra extra careful okay what I want to do now is dump the live crystals in the water you never ever ever dump the water into the line cuz you don't want it to splash so you just leave the water in there and then you just very carefully dump the lion here the point I want to make is it's gonna smoke if it smokes don't be surprised and it's also gonna be hot so here I go I'm gonna dump the lye in the water so I'm gonna just make sure I get all this line with my stainless steel spoon into the water we want to see a clear liquid I can smell it can you see the smoke so I'm gonna keep stirring because I want it all to be dissolved okay I'm gonna put that there okay so we're gonna set this aside now it's very hot I can feel the plastic container is very hot okay I just want to point out you know you don't want the children around you don't want the pets around because this little container of lye water is very dangerous at this point so you just want to set it there and keep everybody away from it what we're wanting it to do at this point is cool down to a hundred degrees so we're just going to set it there while we do our lard so we have to melt this lard on the stove because it has to be liquid okay so I'm going to scrape all this lard in this pan and then I'm gonna warm it up on the stove all righty we have our lard over here on the stove I turn the stove on and we're gonna heat this up until it's liquidy okay the lard is all warmed up and totally liquidy we only need it to be about room temperature so I'm gonna let it I'm gonna pour in the bowl and let it cool down just a bit before we add the lye water okay here I go I'm gonna dump the lard into my bowl I'm just gonna sit here and let that empty for a second we're all ready to dump the lyon water mixture into the lard we've used the thermometer here to make double sure the water line mixture is 100 degrees that's what you want it to be before you dump it into the lard so I'm going to do that now very carefully and I'm not going to splash so I'm going to take my time would it be careful and it's going to sink to the bottom of the lard mixture okay so we'll set this aside now I'm going to stir this for a second before I get my little mixer and put my mixer in it make sure the lard is room temperature before you dump your water and lime mixture into your lard so the two temperatures of the two different bowls are important so I would say room temperature you know around 80 degrees for the lard and then the lye and the water mixture is exactly 100 degrees and those are important and the way your soap will set up later it's chemistry it's actually a little chemical reaction that's going to be going on here for the next 24 hours okay so I think I have this mixed enough I'm going to switch to the little hand mixer we're going to use our little hand mixer for 20 to 30 second blast and we're going to make sure it's under there before we turn it on okay so that's 20 but I'm just gonna keep mixing it like this so that was 20 seconds and I'm just counting one one thousand so I just no way stir it like this again see how it's starting to trace when I go around like that do you see how it's tracing this is how you know when the soap is ready it's gonna be tracing and you can see the marks I'm leaving when I move the spoon or spatula or web whatever in the soap mixture so this is ready to pour into the mold so we're gonna get back with this phone okay this looks like nice pudding as you can see it it's you can see the trace marks I'm making so that's how you know you don't want to go beyond this though you can over stir so I'm gonna dump this in the mold now let me just get this last bit in here and then I'm gonna spread it out nice spray to the tippity-top of this mold now this is what we do the last step we're going to cover it and then we're going to cover it with a towel you have to keep the heat in because there's a process going on a chemical process that makes this mixture into the actual soap it is not soap right now and it's still dangerous with the lye in there so until it sets and we'll come back tomorrow and cut it it's dangerous still so you still want to be very very careful so I'm going to turn the edges of this towel in and I'm going to cover it up really good and I'm going to put a little blanket over it too so you can see you really want to cover it up good okay now this little extra bit I'm going to cover as well and I'm going to use that for my homemade laundry soap it won't be nice enough to make into a bar so I'm just going to call this in and then I'm just gonna leave this tip for 24 hours okay here it is we'll be back tomorrow to show you the next step so see you in 24 hours okay it's been 24 hours and I cannot wait to unwrap the soap so here we go we're gonna unwrap it unmold it and we're gonna cut it this is our simple simple three ingredient homemade homestead soap and look how easy it comes off it just comes right off the silicone mold to get your soap out so that is such a plus for a cheap inexpensive soap mold we bought this on Amazon now I've never never used one of these molds before this is my first time so I'm not sure how exactly I saw one person turn it inside out but there you go you don't even have to it is so smooth that turned out so good now the edges on the top I'll show you how to fix that later cuz right now all we're gonna do is cut in so you just cut the bar whatever size you like if you like a big thick bar cut a big thick bar feel like a little bar cut a little bar that is such a high bar so I like a little bar soap I don't like a big old bar that gets slimy over time so and if you have children that's like the perfect bar soap for the sink putting to not get you get your paws off the soap okay so now we'll measure it will do half-inch bars I don't know I just want to do it I don't want to measure it I just want to do it so I'm gonna cut these in half and then if I want to give a bar to my friends to try it and I'm not sure they're gonna appreciate it you can just give them a small bar to try it you don't have to give them a big huge bar okay it's just I can't tell you how lovely the texture is it's just such a nice bar or soap I just don't think you'll be unhappy if you try this recipe I think you'll be so happy with it and the best part is you'll know your family is not using any chemicals or colorants or deodorants or anything it's just gonna be pure pure soap another thing about homemade soap I wanted to say is this soap dries out and then it just sits there it does not continually dissolve and it won't be slimy that's another plus of homemade soap you gotta cut it now while it's soft so now's your chance to cut it whatever size and shape you want these are all my personal bars right here that I'm doing the next step is it has to cure for three weeks so you're gonna get your container get your plastic needlework sheets we bought the plastic needlework sheets on Amazon just so you know it's cuz it's a good price that's why we do now I'm just gonna stack the soap in here because it's gonna sit in here for three weeks and I'm just gonna go put this in the shelf in the bathroom so I'm just stacking it in here you know so it's air in between each piece you don't have to be picky err perfect whatever I like just you stand them up on the edge so the most air can touch them as possible you don't want to lay it flat like that it's it's going to cure better if you turn it up on its edge so make sure you cut them thick enough to where you can set them up on the edge and then these are the little skinny ones that are the little trial bars for people that want to try my soap which I know I'm going to have a lot of them okay we're going to explain what you need to look for in your bar soap here give them a close up of that bar what you want is a nice smooth consistency you don't want to see any blotchy areas any crystals or just anything abnormal it should be smooth and creamy now I'm going to show you how to clean up the bar a little bit and make it look nicer if you want to give it away or you just would prefer it to be a little neater you get your potato peeler and then you're just gonna do the corners you can just scrape the corner off if you want to give somebody a housewarming gift or something you can use your soap and this is a way just make it look a little more clean edge I like the top because it almost looks like whipped cream or something with vanilla in it but it's okay we'll still we'll still fix it up a little we'll leave the little whoop-dee-doo at the tippity-top so you can see the one where you take the potato peeler and you just get the edges off it it does it's clean it up nicely even though it's such a simple little procedure it does make the bar look a little nicer now we're just gonna let this cure for three weeks and then we'll be back to look at the absolute finished product I hope everybody has had fun making homemade soap we need bar soap around the house everybody uses it I'm sure and this is a pure inexpensive soap for your family come back because we're gonna add a few more ingredients to the next recipe we give you so stay tuned for soap recipes for your homestead now you can own this episode click the link below to get an instant download of this video sign up for Becky's homestead newsletter go to Becky's homestead dot-com and sign up on the right you'll get articles news and specials from Becky every month unsubscribe anytime no spam thanks for watching if you have any questions or suggestions please email me and doodles happy homesteading bye bye this is so it stays hot because there was a heat moisture but a heat we have to keep the heat in what huh I don't know there's a process is what I was trying to think of let me just move phase huh it's a little whoop-dee-doo right there it even feels real I'm not kidding feel it it feels smooth and nice okay let me don't put him over there I'll put them in the garbage what are you doing just wait just have to be perfect Scott having so many wings no way we thought Center now I want to take a second here to talk about the soap mold because if you buy certain soap molds they're very pricey but this silicone it's kind of like a bread a bread pan or it does say soap mold - I think both in the they're very very nice and they're cheap that's the good part about them and some people complained that the sides would bulge when you filled it to the top and it did a little tiny bit but let me show you what I did to fix it oh okay what we did to fix that is we have these weights from an old-fashioned scale which are kind of heavy so you just need something kind of heavy and we just set them like that simple fix for a problem that the silicone molds have but the plus of the silicone outweighs the little bulge problem it's easily fixed

Channel: Becky Sunshine

Views: 888,792

Keywords: soap making, homesteading

Id: FfY2-Z0S_io

Length: 22min 19sec (1339 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 30 2013